Wednesday, December 12, 2012

I finished up a decent sized group of goblins to cover two different painting contests over at CDO. 5 of these were used as my Golden Hat entry and the other 3 were used for the first round of the 2nd year of the Brush Slave League. The plan was for the GH entry to be displayed and voted on before the BSL team made an appearance but due to some delays the GH pictures were actually posted after those from the BSL...so much for being an anonymous event...haha. Anyway...on to the figures.

These are all from the Marauder MB4 Goblin Raiders Unit...perhaps the best goblins from the Marauder range. It is an interesting unit...originally sold in a blister box of 12 figures...4 command, 4 warriors, and 4 archers. As we all know a unit of 12 goblins is just asking for disaster on the table top so I have expanded my unit to 22....and I equip them as archers and just move the warriors to the front rank if they engage in melee.

here is the Golden hat entry which includes the musician from the unit

Friday, December 7, 2012

My painting "mojo" seems to have escaped me this week...I just can't seem to find the time or energy to finish up the few projects that are lingering on my table. So, this week, I did what all hobbyists in such a situation do....I started a bunch of new projects! haha

I recently ordered a batch of 100 20mm square bases with the "horizontal" slot...and upon their arrival I've had the urge to get some of my many units based up and ready for priming. I'm really making a push to get as many units as possible in a game ready condition...even if they are not painted...so that I am more likely to actually use them in games...which I hope are going to be a more common occurrence this winter. One of the major impediments to that task was the lack of straight slot bases in my collection. This shipment makes this work possible.

Here are the units that I managed to get set up over the last couple of days...as you will see I have been focusing on getting some missle troops ready to rumble.

1. Dwarf Crossbows

This unit is composed mostly of Marauder Dwarf sculpts (MM15s) and includes some wonderfully characterful pieces. The shooters in the front rank are all "plug-in" figures that could be armed with a spear or Crossbow...sadly I only have 4 of the six crossbows that I need....but I'm fairly confident that the ones produced by White Knight for his dwarfs will fit these guys pretty well. You may also notice that the musician for this force is actually the piper that came with the Marauder Pike Dwarf Unit (MB1) and that the Standard is from the MM11 dwarfs. (The Pike unit will be built with the MM15 Drummer). Fellow dwarf fanatic, Hitmonkey, on Bugman's has recently started painting a unit of these and his work has been a great inspiration for me to do something with mine.

2. Empire Handgunners

Here we have a unit of the excellent Puff and Slash Empire handgunners that came out towards the end of the 3rd edition. I'm a big fan of the Empire forces that were released at this time...and these handgunners fought many a battle on my table back in the day. I could have wished for one more variant on the shooter poses but I'll work with what was produced....though I've been considering a head swap or two...

As you can see I need to convert that slightly damaged halberdier into a standard bearer.

3. Empire Archers

Continuing with the Empire theme I also got this unit of archers based....more lovely sculpts though a little more difficult to rank up. I have yet to find a musician I like for this unit...so they may have to survive without one.

4. Empire Crossbows

Closing out the Empire branch of my army for this post is a unit of Crossbowmen...again dating from the end of the 3rd edition. With a command section of Marauder Figures from the MM61 range. Sadly the drummer causes a lot of problems with ranking these figures so I might have to figure something else out for command models...but these look good for now and are painted...so YAY!

I've never been a fan of the big black plastic crossbows that game with these, and many other 3rd ed shooty types, so I'm exploring weapons from other manufacturers. If you have suggestion please leave a comment.

5. Bretonian Armored Bowmen

These are the figures that have sent me down the rabbit hole of chasing 4th and 5th edition Brets for a small army...I've owned a number of these sculpts since they were released in the mid-90's but only got around to painting some for the last LPL contest on the Lead Adventure Forum. In the process I realized that they are just great figures and that I needed to own them all! You will notice two plastic figures in this group...despite my nearly unviersal contempt for plastic figures these ones are not too terrible and blend in well with their metal counterparts...well enough for the back rank anyway...:-).

Well there you have it...five new units for me to work on...that should keep me busy for the next lifetime! Sadly this is but a fraction of the units I need to build up and paint...sigh...and YAY!

So what have I learned during this exercise? A few things have come to mind.

1. I've often said that I like to collect "units" rather than "figures" and I think that mindset shows through with this selection. This thought probably really places me outside what most Oldhammer folks would call the "classic" period of citadel figures...but I am starting to feel that the figures from the end of the 3rd and the early years of the 4th editons make the best, most cohesive looking , units. I still appreciate the earlier models tremendously, particularly the RoR, but for much of my army I prefer this slightly later style of troops. (please don't throw rocks at me...)

2. I have way too much painting ahead of me! I'm going to have to work on some systems for speeding up my process with these units. I would love to spend unlimited amount of time on each figure...but at the rate I'm going these guys will never make it to the table top in a painted form. Comprimises must be made in the hopes of having completed armies before I die!

3. I seem to like units of 18 for shooty types....but now that I look at them...maybe 22 would be better...hehehe

4. As I finish these units up and get all the final little fiddly bits for them I can see my collecting focus really shifting to quality over quantity. In almost all my units I'm looking for just a few pieces to make them complete...hopefully a reduction in the amount of time spent on ebay will allow me to make more progress on getting table ready units in a game.

5. 100 straight slot bases was not enough! I see another order in my future...

Friday, November 30, 2012

Well folks by faithfully following my little slice of the blogosphere you have seen me accomplish a bit of painting, followed some of my obsessive collecting, and seen me try out new games like Cavern Crawl...what you haven't seen is me actually playing a game of 3rd edition...well that is about to CHANGE!!

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I bribed (with food) three of my buddies into joining me in my geek cave (basement) for a basic game of WFB 3rd edition. I have given up on trying to find current WFB players in my area that are willing to play 3rd edition...its just TOO frustrating...and I've decided to make my own Oldhammer Players by brainwashing some of my friends. These guys have heard about my collecting habit and some have seen me putting my "toys" in baths of various solutions at work in a effort to strip off the horrible paint jobs, but none of them have any experiece with the game itself....so they have not been tainted by the competitive, list driven, crap that passes for WFB these days....perfect fodder for 3rd ed. brainwashing!

To this end I whipped up a couple of quick lists based on the figures that I wanted to play with...they both ended up in the region of 1400pts...based on the Warhammer Armies book. The units were uniform in their composition...no heroes, no banners, no musicians...and each army was lead by one Character model, or general. Additionally each army had one big gribbly.

On the "good" side, led by Alex (and me where needed), we had a force of dwarfs which consisted of:

General 20th level

Ogre Body Guard 20th Level

12 Thunderers

12 Xbows (Bugman's)

15 Dwarf Warriors (Marauder Clansmen)

15 Dwarf Warriors (Ulther's)

10 Hammers

6 Giant Slayers

1 Swivel Gun Team

1 Fire Thrower Team

On the "evil" side, led by Tom and Brian, we had a force consisting of Greenskins and Chaos Dwarfs..as follows:

Orc General on Warboar 20th Level

8 +1 Shock Elite Boar Riders

8 Goblin Wolf Riders

20 Orc Warriors (Marauder MB1)

15 Orc Big Un's

20 Goblin Warriors

22 Goblin Archers

15 Chaos Dwarf Warriors (MM90s)

12 Chaos Dwarf Xbows

1 Chaos Dwarf Bazuka Team

1 Chaos Dwarf Mortar

1 Troll

Here is a Picture showing the Battlefield and some of the forces to be involved...These are all iPhone Shots...and the lighting in my "cave" is pretty bad so try not to cringe too much...Also There are a lot of naked figures on this table...sorry about that...I'm working on it! You know I'm a slow painter...:-)

As you can see we have some quality "dish scrubber" hedges in the center....some beat up old Card houses from back in the day scattered about...and a sizable forest on one flank. Not clear in these pictures are a number of smallish hills mostly around the outside edge of the table.

I failed to take enough pictures or notes to write up a clear battle report but I will try to illustrate what happened in general with the pics I have.

Here we go...Tom and Brian sent the Boar Riders around on their right flank and the wolf rider around their left flank....the infantry headed up the middle with the Goblin warriors, Big Un's and Chaos Dwarf warriors clogging things up in the middle while the Orc Boys headed for the gap between the brown house and the forest. The evil artillery advanced up the small hills in each corner of their deployment zone in order to get the best vantage point of the field and rain death down on their hated foe.

The Dwarfs carried out a general advance with the Thunderers taking up position behind the hedge and Bugmans squeezing into the space between the brown house and the woods. The two units of Warriors advanced to hold the center and the Hammerers remained in reserve. The stunties knew that a good defense was their armies best option against a fast moving foe.

Note the use of the old school unit cards...I wanted the stats to be easy to find for each unit...

The dwarf army is almost completely painted...the Evil side...not so much

Missile fire for the first few rounds was pretty much ineffective...with only a few casualties caused on both sides.

As the threat to each flank became apparent Alex (Dwarf commander) positioned his hammerer to await the Boar riders and his slayers and swivel gun to receive the Wolfriders. On a side note the Chaos Dwarf Bazuka team blew itself to smithereens...they only got one shot off...and it missed.

The Evil side's double envelopment is shaping up nicely!

"Crump the Stunties!"

As things progressed the Goblin warriors were pushed to the front of the
traffic jam in the center of the table and they took on Ulther's
Draagon company...an easy victory for the dwarfs right?! Wrong!
amazingly the Goblins were able to push back the Dwarfs no less than 3
times! The Marauder dwarf clansmen to Ulther's right were clobbered by a
Mortar round and bolts from the Chaos Dwarf shooty tyes...when they
were then charged by the Troll they decided to head off to the local pub for
pint....sadly the Troll smahed most of them with his club before they
could get service....

The Wolf riders were help up by the Swivel gun crew long enough to get charged in the flank by the Slayers...and the Boar riders got stuck into a slow grinding combat with the Hammerers. In the center Ulther's finally sent the Goblin warriors on their way but were promptly charged by the Big Un's...a much more challenging foe. The Ogre Bodyguard swept in and faced off against the troll...a true clash of the titans! The Ogre inflicted a lot of wounds and the troll regenerated them...over...and over again He also puked on the Ogre's shoes...which just made him even more angry!

Bugman's was charged by the Orc boys and fell back before the larger unit. Things were starting to look a bit rough for the Goodguys.

But the Dwarfs gained a brief respite when the Slayers managed to drive the Wolf riders off the table and turned their attentions to flanking the Orc Boys engaged with Bugman's. The Hammers managed to fight the boar boys to a draw. And to add injury to insult for the baddies the CD mortar blew itself up as well. Was the momentum changing? Were the dice finally warming up for the dwarfs? Of course not you silly fool....

In the next turn the boar riders pushed back...and then broke the
hammers....the still engaged Ogre champion was charged by the Orc General and the whole unit of Chaos Dwarf Warriors and Ulther's was
slowly getting ground into mincemeat by the Big Un's....sigh

Plus it was getting really late...so Alex "threw in the towel" and ordered the retreat of the surviving Dwarfs.

Victory to the Baddies...but it was a near run thing...if a few die rolls had gone differently the battle could have easily swayed the other way....but it didn't and the evil army won the day.

Most importantly the guys had a great time and all are anxious to do it again...thats the best outcome of all!

Next time I'll take better pics...I promise....off to do some painting...naked figures look terrible on the table top!

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Well...things are finally settling out here in VT after a hectic Thanksgiving holiday that saw me out of town and not getting any hobby work done. But over the last few nights I've managed to fulfill my 6-hour time allotment and I was able to finish both figures that I previewed in the last post....(we're not going to talk about how depressed I am to have only finished two figures in 6 hours...sigh)

First off is the converted Chaos Dwarf drummer that I completed for the miniature exchange...still not overly happy with the drum head design but I will let the receiver of this figure decide if he wants to change it or not. I actually think that this version looks quite a bit better than my original...the red just works better with this figure.

He put down the Crossbow and picked up a drum!

Secondly is the White Knight Zweihander that I was finishing up for the monthly Bugman's Painting challenge...I quite happy with how he turned out. As mentioned before this is a figure that really spoke to me...I feel it is the best of the Zweihander set....but that is my personal opinion of course...there are a number of great figures from this set.

"None shall PASS!"

...and while I had the camera set up I went ahead and snapped a couple shots of the complete unit with this bloke and the drunken sergeant added.

I'm hoping to add just two more figures to this unit to bring it up to a respectable 3rd edition size of 14 figures...not bad for an elite unit...I will be running these guys with Hammerer stats so they will be doing some serious slicing and dicing of their opponents.

Next up....Blue actually plays a game!!! (Ok...I just GMed but still!!!)

Monday, November 19, 2012

Over at Chaos Dwarfs Online there is a semi-regular painting event that challenges participants to sit down for a 6 hour painting frenzy and to document where they started and where they end up during that period. This weekend saw another of these events take place...the first that I have had a chance to participate in. Sadly I was not able to set aside an entire 6 hour chunk but was forced to break things up into little segments of time and try to document both what I was doing and and how long it took. This being the case I chose to try and kill two birds with one stone...you see I had also committed to participating in the CDO miniature exchange...and my recipient...a nice guy with the handle DAGabriel...had asked me if I could reproduce the conversion I had made of a CD musician from a Xbow dwarf for the Golden Hat competition from a couple of years ago. I was more than happy to give this a go again and documented the process...something that I failed to do the first time I converted this figure.

So...here we go....

This is a picture of the figure to be converted...and the goal...a converted CD musician.

You can see that the base figure is one of the classic CD xbowmen from
the 3rd edition time period...normally i wouldn't covert such a
classic...but this figure had already had his horns cut off by some
silly person so I don't feel too bad about converting this vintage
piece.

The first thing I had to do was use a utility knife to shave off this
dwarfs mustache and lower lip...do a general figure cleanup...and mount
him to his base. Elapsed time 11 minutes

Next I busted out the green stuff and covered up the quarrels sticking
out of his quiver to make it look like a small case...maybe for his drum
sticks...?

I also (amazingly) found the same marker that I had cut up to make the
body of the drum on my first conversion and sliced off another round and
shaved it down to the right size and thickness. Then I used more green
stuff to sculpt his face mask.

Total elapsed time: 38 minutes

After this had some time to cure I put the skin on the drum head and set that aside to cure as well.

Total elapsed time: 49 minutes

Once they had hardened...hastened along by a spell next to the wood stove.....I glued the drum into place...

And finally put the little ball on the end of the arrow he was holding to turn it into a drum stick.

Conversion is done! Pretty straight forward eh?

So I let this completely harden for a few hours and then primed it. In my next post I'll cover the painting of this figure. Total elapsed time so far...1 hour 5 minutes.

Since this didn't actually take that much time I started in on a second figure to fill some of my time allotment. For this I decided to work on the figure that Im preparing for the Bugman's monthly painting contest. I opted to paint up another of the White Knight Zweihanders....and this one is my favorite of the bunch...somehting about this figure that I just love. Here is the primed version...

He just has an "attitude" about him that I really like. Anyway...I spent about 1.5 hours on him and got him to this point.

Essentially just the base colors...looks a little rough now but it will all smooth out in the end....I hope. The next post will have the finished versions of both of these figures.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

All right...just a quick post today....and not the something different I had promised in the las post...maybe next time...:)

While I had those wonderful Evil Dwarf figures on my painting table over the couple of weeks I also took the time to assess the condition of the rest of my painted CDs. Since I had them all out I decided to snap a few quick pics showing them as a unit. I took these pics with my iPhone so they are not top notch...but this phone takes decent pictures (...is that an improbable sentence or what? I must be showing my age!)

Anyway...here are two shots of the Whole horde...this is MM90s, a few of the classic Citadel CDs, and few conversions by me, as well as a number of Ewal Dvergar from Clam's range.

And here is one shot that is all the MM90s I have painted so far...plus my two conversions...and one Ewal Dvergar just to even the ranks...and 1 citadel CD...but mostly MM90s!

I still have quite a few shields to add...and 6 more MM90s to add to this unit...but I'm getting there...slowly...

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Well I had wanted to wait a couple of days before posting this up....but I just can't! this figure is just TOO good! This Chaos Dwarf which has been named Johann by Clam and the Sculptor, John Pickford, is a special one. John Sculpted this figure on his own, just for fun, when Clam was just starting to contemplate the range which would become know as the Ewal Dvergar. It didn't really fit with the multi-part Core Warrior range that Clam was interested in creating but when John shared the sculpt with him Clam couldn't pass up the chance to have it cast up....

...and I'm Glad he did. This is one of those figures that I fall in love with when I first hold it in my hands...figures like this are few and far between...the Ratnik Dwarf Minstrel...MM15 Dwarf with Arquebus...MM90 Mage and Skull face...are a few of the others that have stirred such feelings. While this feeling can be great motivation...it can also create some anxiety for the painter. I was intimidated by the figure...the level of detail is quite impressive...and I didn't want to FUCK it up!

...in fact, with Johann, this anxiety began even before that...with the Johann figure you have choices to make..before you paint! The figure is cast as one piece and looks like this...

Its very cool like this...look at that Breast Plate! But since it is a dwarf, John felt obligated to include an option for the figure to have a beard...so he sculpted up this add-on piece...

Again...thanks Clam for the pic

Again...he looks very cool with that stylish beard...a beard which any self respecting dwarf...chaos or no...could appreciate. But it covers up the exquisite sculpting on the breast plate...what to do...what to do?!

Well I couldn't decide....I wanted it both ways...so I took a risk and attempted to sculpt a GS beard onto the first figure that would look like a beard...but that could also be believable as hair for the face on the Chest too.

Here is what I ended up with...

This is actually my own picture....

Ok...hurdle one passed...now to figure out a color scheme for this figure....again I was paralyzed by the options...so much detail..particularly on the Shield, which we haven't even discussed yet, as well as the breast plate, and shoulder pads. What colors would suit them best?! In the end I fell back on colors that I know well and love. My typical blue and a nice medium gray for the highly detailed parts. I felt that these colors highlighted the best of the model without loosing any of its character with a motley of colors. I tried to let the quality of the sculpt shine through.

Alright enough yammering from me...here are the detail shots...

Front...."You talkin to me?"

...Here comes the Shield!

There it is! So Sweet!

Alright that shield demands a special mention...it is like a complete sculpture of it own...just a remarkably expressive face...and the depth of the detail made it a joy to paint. I tried to carry the Red eye theme through the shield, shoulder pads and Dwarf.

There is a good teaser of the shoulder pads...

And a Detail of the Right Shoulder pad.

So there he his...Johann in all his glory. You will notice that I based him on a 30mm Round lipped base...Thats because I don't see Johann joining a CD unit like the others...he is stand alone...in fact I might just find a pedestal I can put him on...so he can oversee work on my painting table.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The end of October saw the wrap up of the first Round of the inaugural year of the Brush Slave League over on CDO. The theme for the Final round of this contest was "Thank You CDO"....so we were encouraged to paint a team that includes Chaos Dwarfs. This was a great opportunity for me to paint up a couple more of Clam's Excellent Ewal Dvergar as well as a Marauder MM90.

As always with these figures they were a lot of fun to paint....Here is the team I painted up....the one in the middle is a very special case...more on him later

Clam CD on left, Johann in the middle and Marauder MM90 on the right

For this post I will focus on the figures on either side of this picture. First the MM90. This is a figure I picked up in a mixed lot of Chaos Dwarfs...and I got him fairly cheap...probably due to the fact that his horns have been clipped and modified...here is what the figure originally looked like

Original Catalog Image

And here are some close ups of my version of this particular figure.

My horns are bent but I'm still a mean Motha!

With the other two figures having fairly dark color armor I decided to use this figure with a much lighter yellow tan color...I like it! I wasn't sure until the absolute final highlight but in the end I'm happy with the way it turned out. You can see that I have employed one of the Goblin shields that came with the seperate icons...this one always struck me as more "chaos" than "goblin" plus its a great size for these figures. (BTW I could use about 8-10 more of these if anyone has extras!)

The next figure is one of Clam's excellent Ewal Dvergar. This one went together very easily and needed no gap filling and only a little bit of clean-up. I had painted one of the MM90s with a purple armor color more than a year ago and was never really happy with it...so this was a chance to redeem myself with this color. Since that first figure I have acquired a couple of Vallejo Model Colors paints that cover the Purple range pretty well. These seemed to have worked better than the Reaper Master Series purples I used on the previous figure. Anyway...here he is.

I Love this guys Mace!

Here is this last guy with the other Ewal Dvergar I painted up a few months ago...they are looking tough!

You know I had originally thought of these guys as "add-ons" to my MM90 unit...but now I'm thinking that they might be their own group..:)

So...obviously this is only two of the three figures that was included in this Brush Slave Team....the third...Johann...well...he is worthy of his own blog post...so you will just have to wait a few days!

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

So they its been awhile since I've posted a figure I have been painting and their should be a number of painting related posts coming along in short order over the next couple of weeks.

To start things off I painted up a copy of the Sergeant figure for my unit of Zweihanders produced by White Knight. This figure arrived just in time for the the October Painting Challenge over on Bugman's Brewery...the theme of which was "Beer" Couldn't think of a better figure for this catagory....though if you have a look at the other entries you will see lots of great dwarfs enjoying their favorite beverage! Check them out here: BEER!

Here he is

Nothing like a little "liquid courage" before you start swinging around a giant sword!

I'll try to get a picture together with the rest of the unit in the near future.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

So just a quick post today....I want to show off some recent acquisitions...As some of you know I've been looking around of a copy of the Rogue Trader 40k rules for a couple of weeks...I had several offers from the other side of the pond but shipping proved prohibitive. Finally I was approached by a member of the Warhammer-Empire Forum on this side of the world that had a slightly beat paper back copy that he was willing to part with for low money. So I jumped at the chance and agreed to take it off his hands...he then mentioned that he would throw in a copy of the Rogue Trader Compilation for $5 ...and a hardback copy of the 3rd edition WFB for another $5. I already have a vintage copy of the last...but for $5 how could I pass up another.

When I got back from my ETERNAL business trip I found a box with the following waiting on my desk...

....along with several other packages of goodness...which may be the topics of future blog posts.